Tech in the Classroom - Week 2

This week we continued our work on using technology for the classroom.  We had to get going with some kind of social media.  I chose Twitter.  I'm not quite sure how applicable it would be to an ESL classroom, but this aspect of the world is likely change so much by the time I'm actually teaching, who's to say?  It's exciting to think that I could send out little nuggets of information, or homework reminders, or links to relevant, meaningful news for my students.

I liked working with Poll Everywhere and Today's Meet.  I thought they were both pretty awesome, and I could see using those a lot, provided my students have the connectivity.  I think I could use these at the beginning of a school year, or a semester (trimester, quarter, etc.) or even a unit or lesson.  It could be used to form team-building exercises: "Find someone who likes pizza," or "Everyone who likes Winter or Summer gather on this side of the room, everyone who likes Spring or Fall line up on this side."  This could be really useful.

I had to create two presentations: a prezi and a sliderocket.  Prezi was tough.  Maybe I didn't do it right, or maybe I'd had too much caffeine, but it was just over-stimulating.  SlideRocket was pretty cool; I could see using that again, too.

The YouTube video assignment was a challenge.  I see now how important things like lighting can be, but I learned how to navigate YouTube a little better.  Considering I first watched a YouTube video on my own only a couple of months ago, I'm pretty pleased about that.  I didn't do too well adding the video to my website.  That took a while.  And then I realized I put it on the wrong page, so I fixed that tonight.

This tech stuff is pretty challenging, but thanks to my instructor and my classmates it's much less daunting than I expected.  The biggest challenge I see with it is...Scratch that, I see two challenges: the connectivity of my students and my own time to create online content.  Those will need to be subjects of future posts.

Technology in the Classroom - 1st Post!

So, I am enrolled in a class on using technology in the classroom.  This week we're getting an introduction to some of the basics - creating a website, blogging, some video and basically creating a digital profile.  It's a little daunting - I don't have much production-level exposure to these kinds of tools; I've only been a consumer thus far.  However, I've heard good things about the class I'm enrolled in, and I trust that by the end of it I'll be a lot more familiar with it all.

This is my first post in my blog.  What we have in this post is simply an update on what I've been learning.  I'm hoping that as things progress I will have more content-specific posts with respect to my content area - English as a Second Language (ESL).  I've been working on a website, and tried a couple of different options.  I think I found one that I like, so I may post a link to it or talk more about that in a future post.